Many IFEA members and newsletter subscribers are unfamiliar with IFEA Europe's ongoing cooperation with universities. However, we find that members can benefit tremendously from research in the field of festivals, events, and tourism. We encourage you to attend “Journeys of Expression”, the academic research “attachment” to the IFEA Europe conference in Copenhagen, in September, hosted by Leeds Metropolitan University's Department of Tourism and Cultural Change, and held in cooperation with Copenhagen Business School's Center of Tourism and Experience Economy.
The conference features a series of more than 20 recent papers related to the use of festivals and events to stimulate local economic growth: Inspirational research papers include titles such as “Banishing Vikings from the Norseman's Home: Community-Government Conflitch and the Up-Helly-Aa Fire Festival of Shetland, UK”, “Creating Culture in Korea: Tourism, Regeneration, and the Seoul Design Olympiad”, “The Australian Festival of Travel Writing” and “Medieval festivals in Croatia: Manor fair in Dubovac, Karlovac – pitfalls and possibilities in need of re-structuring and re-gaining the image”; just to name a few.

Some practitioners wonder about the value of festival research and focus merely on artistic qualities, immediate audience reactions, and a black bottom line. Others are deeply engaged in providing and analyzing attendance figues, audience preferences, services, and economic impact including fringe benefits to the wider community to continuously improve their festivals. Regardless of ones' standpoint and focus, insight broadens one's perspective. For instance, recent conclusions from the Pozna? round of the festival research workshops were interesting, as they demonstrated the ambivalence of cultural impact. Liverpool 2008, for instance, was deemed a cultural and creative success by the cultural and creative industries, while the ambition of strengthening the civil society through the cultural capital year was deemed as a failure. Who would have guessed?

In 2007, the European Commission commissioned Empirica to do a mapping of cultural websites in Europe. The report that came out on February 18th, 2010, is rather substantial and can be found online at http://www.culturemap.net/documents/CULTUREMAP_Final_Report_20100216.pdf

It is an impressive read, in particular in view of the fact that cultural websites hardly existed just a decade ago. Yet the report is rather naïve in its conclusion, suggesting a “one stop shop approach; a central access point to the multitude and comprehensive information offers and different types of services already available on the internet for all cultural disciplines.”

Culture is, by nature, lively and vibrant. New initiatives are taken every hour or minute somewhere in Europe, small amateur projects suddenly thrive and grow while other die out, and initiatives frequently overlap several industries and are not easily fitted into special cultural boxes. Moreover, social media platforms are by nature overtaking communication about cultural activities and replace branded websites. Thus, although the report is interesting, the content and findings are already "old" at the time of publication. The conclusion therefore seems to be a yet an other youthful attempt to imagine the ideal based on the assumption that the world remains status quo. It doesn't.

Country cultural profiles

For anyone interested in European culture, the site www.culturalpolicies.net provides a great overview of national cultural policies. It may be interesting for readers of this newsletter to click their own country's profile to see if the presentation is fair, or maybe learn something new!

 

Culture Action Europe reports that the EU's DG EAC will soon publish a Communication about the current status of the European Agenda for Culture. EU member states, the Open Method of Coordination working groups, and the Structured dialogue Platforms have been asked to provide input at different levels.

Following the publication of the Communication, the Parliament should publish a report, and the Council of Ministers will then adopt final policies as part of its work plan for the period 2011 -2013. A radical review of the three objectives of the European Agenda for Culture does not seem to be planned, but other EU initiatives will have impact on the arts and culture sector.

First and foremost, the Commission's ambition to tackle intellectual property rights is important to parts of the cultural sector, and secondly, efforts to focus on creativity and cultural diversity are continuously seen as important to Europe, although no special initiatives are planned to develop this potential in a direct way in the years to come. EU's cultural and creative industries therefore have to continue to develop argumentation for the importance of supporting a creative environment in Europe by facilitating the working conditions of culture professionals, and by facilitating a broader access to culture for all. A Green paper on cultural and creative industries will be presented during the European Forum on Cultural industries organised under the Spanish presidency patronage in Barcelona on 29 and 30 March. This long awaited political document could bring new opportunities for the sector, both in policy development and funding terms.

Finally, in the context of the 2010 EU Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion, opportunities to raise attention on the social and integration role of culture should appear, especially during the second semester of the Year, under the Belgian Presidency of the EU.

The European Union is launching new cultural strategies. The first draft of the 1014-2020 strategy is on display online. Many organisations gave input to the draft in January. IFEA Europe continues to support initiatives taken by Culture Action Europe to bring culture to the European agenda, and hopes that also the Creativity Manifesto will be considered in Europe's cultural progress.